Firing up fat pipes is inducing anger in many UK broadband customers, according to a survey commissioned by O2 Broadband.
More than half (56 percent) of Britons polled admitted broadband issues have made them lose their temper with their hardware.
Broadband consumers in Cardiff are the most likely to become angered, according to the survey, while users in Bristol are the most dissatisfied with their service. Nearly a quarter of users there said they plan to switch broadband providers in the next three to six months.
Speed tops the list of fat-pipe frustrations, with nearly a quarter of respondents saying sluggish connections are the most annoying thing about their broadband service.
This is in line with a report last year by price-comparison website uSwitch.com, which found nearly four million broadband users are unhappy with the speed of their connection and that the average customer pays £213 per year to receive a speed of 5Mbps but, in reality, receives only 3Mbps.
But the UK's fat pipe-related frustrations don't stop at speed, according to the latest survey. Customer service is also an annoyance for many broadband users — with 20 percent of respondents saying they have difficulty getting through to their provider, and the majority describing being put on hold as one of the most stressful situations of daily life.
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Meanwhile, more than one million Britons are spending at least six hours setting up or troubleshooting their service, with 20 percent having to contact their provider at least three times to resolve problems.
The survey also found the most technology-savvy broadband consumers live in Brighton, while Sheffield dwellers are statistically most likely to need help setting up or managing their service.
The survey was based on the responses of 1,500 broadband users across the UK.
Talkback
I have no problem with my isp (plusnet) it's BT who are the problem, I keep loosing ADSL sync and my router then tries to re-sync repeatedly, it some times takes an hour or so to get it back on again, I'm on an "up to 8 mb" connection but I have never achieved 1mb let alone get near 8mb.
.....even though its now owned by BT. But concentrating on pure download speed is probabaly misleading. Your enjoyment of just surfing the web is going to be just as dependent on the the speed of your own computer, the speed at which the server you are trying to contact replies and the routing that the request and reply takes. In other words thaere is a lot of potential latency built into the system which is more frustrating than simply a slow download speed. Its only when you actually download a file of any size that the difference betwen 512Kb and, say 2Mb becomes really obvious.
I agree with James on his comments. I'm with VirginMedia (ex NTL) cable. I have 4 Mbps service. I run the Broadband Speed Tester championed by ComputerActive magazine and average download speeds of around 3.5Mbps. No complaints here. Individually, some sites/servers don't give me anyway near this but then......
Major complaint is customer service particularly where these are offshore - I've been helping friends resolve line/speed issues. It's not been unknown for the phone to go "dead" on a call !!
If anybody wants to check out their own download speed, ZDNet.co.uk also has its own speed test <a href="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/speedtest/">here</a>: http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/speedtest/
Whilst people really should be told the realities of contention and not 'up to's' I think that a lot of the problem is in third parties putting up content that requires a lot more bandwidth that most people can (reliably) get.
Taking the TV companies for example; it's all very well them making material available and pushing it in their ad breaks, they don't have to provide (or pay for) the bandwidth a user needs to watch it.
What may also help is that it is also explained that there is the x10 factor to be applied to the speeds that most uses see reported on their screens and whom would not know a bit from a bite even if it bit them.